I had to edit this as I inadvertently broke one of the posting rules (sorry about that!). Here is the revised form:
Don't confuse social contrivances--particularly sexual monogamy--as normal just because everyone does it. Males are not hard wired for sexual monogamy and conflating sex and Love is easily one of the most destructive things the Church has ever done, as the vast wasteland of heterosexual marriage has demonstrated with it's low marriage rate and high divorce rate. Males are naturally promiscuous and in spite of marketing to the contrary, it is the exception, not the the rule in the animal kingdom. The healthiest relationships I've ever seen as well as experienced did not involve the expectation of monogamy and with it the foundation of a relationship based on fear and jealousy, which has marred the heterosexual world, while providing content for half the country music catalog and Taylor Swift output. IN short, non-monogamy is not self-destructive as history has repeatedly demonstrated. What is destructive is that Males are raised in the Xian west to have an unhealthy psyche and relationship with their bodies because they are practically brainwashed from birth to be ashamed of their bodies and guilty they have a libido. This leads to denial and guilt that plays out sexual indulgence on the DL, be it through net porn when no one is around, cruising restrooms and gym saunas or hiring an escort for safe discreet play.
Now as for the drinking, recreational drugs and other such physically destructive actions: these spring largely from the above unhealthy and unnatural sexual expectations and social programming scenario. Heterosexuals have this too. You see it in the form of "Ladies night" at a club/bar where the females drink free for the first couple hours before the guys show up and with enough alcohol to suppress socially programmed limitation, everyone may "get lucky" tonight.
Gays, however, have the added weight of being viewed as sick or damaged by a large segment of the Bible wielding society and this compounds the issue seen with the Ladies Night example above, whereby the only way they can stand themselves and satisfy their desires at the same time is to be in a chemically altered state, which opens the door for the easy slide into physical chemical addiction. I credit my sexual experience and the dismissing of the social programming I was being taught as THE reason that I don't drink, don't smoke, and don't use recreational drugs. I am certain there is nothing one can experience more pleasurable or fulfilling than sex. I was and still am, what the faux moralists call "a slut" and I am totally proud of it.
You can see this same self-destructive behavior in the American Bible Belt, which, while leadership insists they know how we can be happy if we just do what they say, their flock comprises the most physically unhealthy (highest region for chronic preventable diseases, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, epicenter for the American meth lab crisis and opioid crisis) population per capita while also being the highest consumers of internet porn (gay and str8) according to annual PornHub stats. Once again, you can't keep telling people they are awful because of Natural internal drive written into their DNA and not expect that it is going to do long term damage to their psyche and again, the only way they can stand to be around themselves is to be in a chemically altered state.
In summary, in order to find some sense of health and normalcy in the gay (or even str8) world, we (gay and str8) have to do some serious self reflecting about what got us here, namely sexual repressive norms that have no scientific basis and run counter to our natural DNA programming. When we overcome baseless sexual morals--sorry, The Bible says so, is NOT a valid reason--then we can approach our lives and our relationships with some sort of grounded basis.
